Wednesday, 7 November 2012

Pupil sits exam while in labour

A 14-year-old girl in Kasese
District endured two days of due labour to sit this year’s Primary Leaving
Examinations (PLE), which were characterised by many interesting tit bits,
including very old candidates. The oldest candidates were a 56-year-old grandmother
in northern Uganda and a 37-year-old pastor in Kabarole District.

The 14-year-old expectant mother
(names withheld) struggled with labour pains on the first day and the school
hired for her a midwife to be by her side in a private room at Nyakasanga
Primary Healthcare clinic, about a kilometre from her school.

“I decided to come and sit the exams
because I thought I could, despite being pregnant. I am sure to complete this
paper before giving birth to my first child,” she said.
Ministry of Education regulations permit girls to continue with their education
even when they are pregnant.

“At the end of the first exam
(mathematics), the supervisors told us that the girl’s condition changed and
that she had pain. We rushed her to hospital where she was kept until the time
to sit the afternoon exam. She told us she was ready to continue,” said Mr
Joshua Munzomba, the headteacher.

When she did not deliver, the
District Education Officer, Mr George Mainja, intervened by allowing the girl
to sit the exams in a special care room under the guard of a police woman. A
midwife attending to her, Ms Doloroza Muhindo, told the Daily Monitor that the
girl was still experiencing the first stages of labour.

Meanwhile, there was a short
interruption at Kitengeesa Church of Uganda Primary School PLE centre in
Buwunga Sub-county after 17 candidates from Nakiyaga Model Primary School began
shaking their heads and shouting at the top of their voices shortly after they
started their papers. The school sits its pupils at Kitengeesa because it
doesn’t have a centre number.

A pastor was called in to conduct
prayers and the pupils stopped the shouting and resumed writing their papers.
The headteacher of the school, Mr Abdu Mubiru, said the symptoms started
manifesting among the pupils several weeks ago but their cause is not clearly
understood.

After the incident some pupils were
taken in a police ambulance to Masaka Regional Referral Hospital for medical
examination but the doctors said preliminary check-ups did not reveal any
sickness. The cause of their problem continues to be a mystery.
Denis Wokorach, a P7 pupil at Panyimur Primary School in Nebbi District,
endured a heart condition to sit through the two days of examinations.

He sat on a mattress while being
attended to by his grandmother in the examination room. Wokorach looked pale.
He occasionally feels dizzy, has to rest and resume answering questions later.

His father had earlier stopped him
from doing his PLE exams because of his sickness but Wokorach insisted that he
would do them as long as he could hold a pen.
Police in Kasanda Sub-county, Mubende District, yesterday arrested Namabaale
Umea Primary School deputy head teacher for alleged involvement in Primary
Leaving Examinations malpractice.

According to the Officer in charge
of Kasanda Police Station, Ms Patience Baganzi, they have arrested the deputy
head teacher and the impersonator and are helping police in investigations.
Also summoned by police is the head mistress.

The suspect had been asked by the
head teacher to sit for another pupil who left school due to pregnancy.
However, the invigilators identified the anomalies in the passport photos when
they realised that the candidate who was sitting for the paper did not
correspond with the one on the Uneb album.

Police also arrested the director
Holy Generation Nursery and Primary School for allegedly embezzling his pupils’
registration fees. Thirteen candidates could not appear for PLE after they
found out that the school had not registered them with the examinations board.

The director (name withheld)
allegedly collected Shs110,000 from each pupil as registration fees for Uneb
and pocketed it, instead of remitting the money to the examination body.